


There's A New Sheriff In Town, And Her Name Is Zooey

by aethelwulf



Category: This Body's Not Big Enough for Both of Us - Edgar Cantero
Genre: Gen, because they're adrian and zooey kimrean, lots of swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 15:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18527551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aethelwulf/pseuds/aethelwulf
Summary: Zooey Kimrean was always overshadowed by her brother. Well, screw that—not anymore.





	There's A New Sheriff In Town, And Her Name Is Zooey

When Adrian woke up, several things were wrong. Their head hurt like shit, for one, and their mouth held the coppery taste of biting his tongue hard enough. Everything but their dead leg seemed to be in working order, even if it hurt to move. But aside from the pain, there was just one little insignificant thing missing. Well, if he couldn’t remember what it was, it couldn’t be that impor—

Zooey.

She couldn’t be _completely_ gone, but that’s what it felt like. As soon as he realized this, Adrian wondered _what the fuck_. From their vantage point on the floor, he couldn’t see much: 

• Sun streaming through the window—probably around ten in the morning or so.  
• Syringe on the floor.  
• Bottle next to the syringe. Empty.

He pieced things together as quickly as he could—he’d probably just put her to sleep, then. But he hesitated to call that the end of the story. What had she done? And why did her hemisphere seem a little too quiet to just be sleeping?

So what had happened last night? He remembered nothing. They might’ve overdosed again, but the last time that happened, it was Zooey who woke up first. And now he seemed to be the only one awake—if you could call it _awake_. Most of their muscles hurt, even ones Adrian didn’t even know they had. Their left arm was held hostage by their upper body, getting jabbed by pins and needles (and so were both of their legs), but their right arm worked, barely. Their right hand crept across the floor to the syringe and Adrian was even more weirded out to find it was full.

As soon as he unstuck their cheek from the floor, Adrian rolled over, shook their dead arm; rolled over again and propped up their torso. Now he could see the desk and the bed, and turning their stiff neck even slightly resulted in shooting pain. Peeking out from behind the desk was a single shoe: a high top, untied—the left one. One of theirs. And the whereabouts of its twin? Adrian didn’t have a clue.

But then the shoe stirred, and Adrian realized there was a foot inside.

In an act of pure will, Adrian dragged them first into a sitting position, then climbed up on the chair, then the desk to apprehend who was without a doubt Zooey’s latest sexual exploit. _Dammit, Zooey, you dumb fucking bitch_. It was hard to look imposing when you couldn’t move 89% of your body and therefore had to half-recline on a desk just to stay up, but Adrian looked down from their cliff like Scar post-regicide. “Get the fuck…”

The words died in their throat as soon as he actually saw her. The woman on the floor was tall, skinny, and lying in what looked like a dried puddle of her own blood. The red spot on the floor radiated out from underneath the left side of her head, staining short hay-blonde hair. She was wearing nothing but a men’s tank top, Calvin Klein boxers, and one sneaker. The leg that had been obscured by the bed was sockless and shoeless, and the woman’s face was obscured by a fedora.

The boxers were what set Adrian off. He recognized them as the “good” pair of underwear Zooey had begged for, then ruined by Sharpieing her name into the waistband—which meant that the rest of Mystery Girl’s getup, too, was probably _his_ goddamn clothes. At this moment Adrian realized how bad this looked: there was a total stranger lying on the floor of their office, who wasn’t dead but might be soon.

The moment after that, Adrian realized that the other shoe was on _their_ right foot. In fact, giving their body a once-over, it seemed like Zooey had only stripped halfway: they were wearing pants and the goddamn waistcoat Zooey insisted on, but missing a tank top and underwear. Now, why Zooey couldn’t have just grabbed another fucking pair, that was beyond him. And of course, the fedora covering the woman’s face was theirs too.

He cautiously reached down and lifted the hat off of her face. And she really did look dead, but that wasn’t important—what was important was that Adrian suddenly felt like he was staring at _them_. A.Z. Mussed, straw-colored hair; mullet just slight enough to still be almost tasteful. The nose was the most interesting part of the face; the lips were so thin they were almost gone. Cheeks hollow, cheekbones prominent. Dark circles punctuated a pair of deep-set eyes. Would be A.Z.’s skin tone if she wasn’t so grey. Softer jaw than A.Z., but only slightly.

But same features. Same face. Almost like this body had a twin.

Adrian slowly looked up. The makeshift Kimrean-shaped door to the bathroom still hadn’t been repaired, and through the hole, Adrian could see in the mirror their reflection. No, _his_ reflection. A.Z.’s face had changed—there was a hardness to their features now that suggested masculinity, not ambiguity. Adrian’s gaze slowly drifted down to their chest.

It was completely flat.

“Zooey?” Adrian said, his voice coming out shaky. This _had_ to be a dream, it had to be—

It was too real. The sun coming through the blinds was too bright, the sounds wafting up from the street below too loud, too varied (Adrian heard cars and people below, and a piano somewhere); he could see pinpoints of dust floating through the air.

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhh.” The woman’s right hand twitched as she came to life. “Aidy…?”

 _Aidy_. That confirmed his fears; he wasn’t A.Z. Kimrean anymore. Now he was just A—completely alone. “Zooey— _holy fucking shit_ —I’m right here, hold on—”

Adrian scrambled over the desk and landed on his face—forgot most of his body wasn’t working. When he picked himself up, she was silent and still again, and her wrist was limp as he checked almost impulsively, because she couldn’t be dead, not so soon after being alive ( _barely,_ he thought, _not enough to count_ ) but she could be—but she wasn’t. Heartbeat. Eyes closed, mouth open, ashy like a corpse, but heartbeat. 

Adrian let himself breathe. 

And then the second tidal wave of panic radiating towards him from the underwater tectonicplatequake that was Zooey hit him. “Zooey, come on,” he pleaded, shaking her by the front of her shirt. And just when Adrian thought he’d lost her for real this time, her eyes finally fluttered open just slowly enough for Adrian to wipe the concern off his face.

“I’m up, I’m up,” Zooey slurred. “’S too bright.”

Internally, and internally only: _thank god_. Alive, talking… This was no worse than waking up after a bad trip. Right? Zooey was going to be fine. Unless she suffered some sort of brain damage, or still only had a right hemisphere…

Okay, that didn’t make him feel better.

“Zooey. Can you see me?” Adrian grabbed her face, directed her slowly glazing stare back towards him. “Where does it hurt?”

Her gaze slipped away from him. “Where’s Adrian?” 

“I’m right here. Where does it hurt?” 

Zooey shook her head, but it was more like just slowly rolling it back and forth across the floorboard. “My brother’s gone.”

“Zooey, snap out of it.”

“I can’t feel him!” 

Zooey’s breathing was edging on hyperventilating, and Adrian found her hand and squeezed. “Zooey. Look at me. I don’t know what happened. Just trust me, okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere.”

“Fuck… hold on.” He reached around behind him for a penlight, and shone it in her eyes. Her pupils constricted normally: “No concussion, that’s good.”

“Your head,” Zooey said, reaching up to touch his left temple. Her fingertips were dusted with brown-red powder as she pulled her hand away.

ADRIAN: No, _your_ head. I’m fine— _you_ were catatonic two minutes ago.  
ZOOEY: _(Beat.)_ Why do you look like us?  
ADRIAN: Fuck.

Every mote of dust drifting around the room stopped and stared. Adrian was trying to formulate a good answer, and the only thing in his head was _she still doesn’t know your fault didn’t tell her thought she knew told her to trust you talk to her about stranger danger your fault._

ADRIAN: _(Suddenly.)_ We’re not in the same body anymore.

Zooey held her hands in front of her face, studied her palms, and looked back at him, frowning. “Adrian?”

He nodded.

“But—”

“I don’t know how. I don’t remember what happened last night.”

“We OD’d?”

“Must have.” Adrian glanced around the room, landing on the desk again. He ran his finger along the edge. “Wait, look—blood.”

ZOOEY: Ours?  
ADRIAN: No, dumbass, it’s Ursula’s. Yes, it’s ours.  
ZOOEY: _(Offended.)_ Adrian…  
ADRIAN: _(Ignoring her.)_ So we must have hit our head. But why? I can’t remember what happened last night. 

He stood, not without effort, and took a seat on the bed. “Hospital last week,” he said, “we got home, blah blah blah, Saturday, nothing, Sunday…” 

“Yeah?”

“Sunday—yesterday. What did we do yesterday?” He scanned the room, searching for anything that might unstick last night from the annals of whatever went on in Adrian’s head. Window, desk, door, bed, wall, microwave, closet, bathroom, nothing. But at approximately 350 degrees, he landed on a bright blue sticky note on the wall, scrawled with A.Z. Kimrean’s bouncy left handwriting—and it hadn’t been there all week: _Call Mom!!!!!_ The enclosed spaces in the _a_ and _o_ were filled in, and the _!!!!!_ was cartoonishly large. He peeled it off and showed Zooey. “Well, you did this. Ring any bells?”

Zooey looked like she was about to throw up, but then she started giggling.

“That’s—that’s what Pavlov said to his dogs—” _snort_ — “you know?” _(Crickets.)_ “Ah, no, sorry.”

“Something useful would be nice,” Adrian snapped. On his second look around, the room took itself apart in his mind, with highlights forming around objects that he could interact with if he pressed A. There was just one little problem, though: without Zooey copiloting his body, his leg was for all intents and purposes gone. “Zooey,” he said carefully, “I can’t walk.”

“Oh, there’s a cane under the bed,” Zooey offered, reaching into the abyss and pulling out a white stick. “Knew that would come in handy.”

Adrian stared at the implication: “Did you rob a blind person?”

“Of course not!” She sounded almost offended. “Well, sort of, but I gave him a better one. This one’s super boring! Got him one with butterflies on it, and a comfy handle.”

“That you stole, I assume.”

“Well, yeah. But I got it from Walmart—you know, sticking it to the man is different from filching a blind guy’s cane.” _(Beat.)_ “Without replacing it.”

“Zooey, you know blind people carry _white_ canes so that other people know they’re blind, right?”

“Uh, well, now I do. Shit. Wait, no—you’re welcome.”

Adrian closed his eyes, took a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth, and said nothing. The cane wasn’t meant to hold weight, but it would do for now. And at least Zooey was back. Zooey was fine; that meant he would be fine, too.

He hobbled over to his first suspect: the unwrapped Pop-Tart, sitting on the ground the toaster and looking guiltier than an overcurious ten-year-old at eleven PM on Christmas Eve. It was unwrapped, Adrian deduced, because something had happened to A.Z. in between opening it and getting to the toaster. He followed the invisible dotted line from the Pop-Tart to the toaster to the trash can, in which several more shiny, cartoon-pastry-bearing foil wrappers resided. “Zooey, what the hell…” He pulled out wrapper after wrapper, tossing them on the floor in front of his sister. “Six? Really?”

“Chill _out,_ ” Zooey said. She was still on the floor, but looked comfortable now that she had curled up and rested her head in the crook of her arm. “I can’t give you diabetes anymore.” 

If the severe annoyance now was anything to go by, Adrian reasoned he would’ve been _pissed_ at Zooey when she first actually ate six Pop-Tarts at what had to be the same time, because like the sticky note, the wrappers hadn’t been there all week. He peered into the bottom of the trash can, but it was empty now that the evidence of Zooey’s sins had been removed.

Now onto the syringe. Its position, much like Zooey, was a casual lay on the floor. He picked it up, hefted it in his hand. Nothing had come out of it; at least not enough to make both of them crash like this. It was uncapped, though, and he pushed the little plastic cover back on and deposited it on the desk.

Next, he visited the bottle; nudged it with his foot. Jack Daniel’s, with only a few drops of whiskey rolling around in the bottom. He was going to tell Zooey to throw her empty bottles away, but that request was almost Sisyphean. 

His face found its home in his free hand, and he groaned. The thing was, everything he looked at _seemed_ important. It was all just out-of-place enough to make him wonder. But it wasn’t enough to point to any certain event for sure, and that was driving Adrian crazy. He’d sleep on it, maybe. Maybe it was better to, what—just pretend like things were normal, and go about their—his—day?

He peeked out of his hand and back at the sticky note. _Call Mom!!!!!_

Maybe that was the best idea. Call Gwen, or better yet, visit her in person. But what would she say? What _was_ there to say?

Zooey had sat up at some point while Adrian was chewing on that thought. “Do you want the other sneaker? I’ll wear the wingtips.”

“ _I’ll_ wear the wingtips,” Adrian corrected, “since they’re mine.”

“Hey! _I_ was the one that stole them—asshole!”

“God, Zooey, shut up. Does my head look bad? I can’t really feel it.”

Zooey rose to her feet, microspat forgotten, and stumbled. Adrian suspected that (much like himself) both of her legs were filled with TV static. “Here, lemme see,” she said, irreverently peeling apart the knot of bloody hair at his temple.

“Ow! Zooey!”

“Quit being a baby—you just said you can’t feel it.” She squinted, then un-squinted, satisfied. “Looks okay. I dunno, though. What about me?”

“Looks fine. But how did we both hit our heads on the same side?”

Not only the same side, they realized two minutes later in front of the dingy bathroom mirror, but in the same shape and size. Their head wounds were perfectly identical. Same went for their haircut and hairstyle—and their eyebrows, nose, and mouth. Zooey’s eyes were grass-green; Adrian’s the color of sunlight through rum. Matching trios of tiny freckles dotted their left index knuckles. Everything about them matched— _almost_. Zooey held open her underwear and was visibly disappointed. 

Adrian rolled his eyes. “What, did you think you were going to get the—”

“Kinda wanted it, yeah.”

“You’re such a… fiend,” he said. “I was thinking we should visit Gwen and let her know what’s going on.”

“Adrian, we don’t know what’s going on.”

“Well… Gwen might help us figure out what happened. Put some goddamn pants on so we can go.” _(Beat.)_ “And _I’m_ wearing the wingtips.”

Zooey _awwwwwww_ ’d and Adrian didn’t budge. 

ZOOEY: Fine, but I get to wear the hat.

**Author's Note:**

> beta'd by keyboardclicks


End file.
